The disclosure relates generally to computing device verification and, more particularly, to verifying client integrity in a distributed computing environment.
Many categories of Internet based services require a high degree of security. Examples include Internet banking, electronic interaction with government services, and documents or files provided with legally binding digital signatures. Typical computing environments may not have adequate security for preventing exposure to attacks that seek to capture user-provided information and to use the captured information to process fraudulent transactions.
Unscrupulous third parties may capture user-provided information in a variety of ways. In one example, a keylogger program may be installed on the user's computer to capture information typed via a keyboard. The keylogger program may be installed by exploiting operating system vulnerabilities or by misleading the user into executing malicious software. In another example, the user may be lead to a malicious website that captures user-provided information. In a further example, a computer display may be manipulated to mislead the user into signing a fraudulent transaction using a legally-binding digital signature.
Existing computer systems are unable to prevent the capture of information by these sophisticated attacks. Many browsers and Internet security programs warn against visiting websites with invalid security certificates or following phishing links. However, such warnings are commonly ignored. In addition, existing operating systems may be patched at any level (e.g., bootloader, kernel, drivers, etc.). Accordingly, such warnings may be disabled by malicious software.
It may be difficult to avoid malicious software from acting as a keylogger or modifying a user's display. New versions of malicious software are under continuous development, and may be tailored to target a limited set of users. Thus, some malicious software may be undetectable by up-to-date anti-virus and internet security software. In some cases, a computing system may be infected without the user installing any software, as in the case of browser vulnerabilities which allow remote code execution.